Immigration Policy and International Student Migration in the United States a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Unive
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IMMIGRATION POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL STUDENT MIGRATION IN THE UNITED STATES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY (JASMINE) TRANG PHAM DOAN HA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Jack DeWaard, Co-advisers March 2019 © Jasmine Trang Ha 2019 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisors, Liz Boyle and Jack DeWaard, without whom this dissertation research would never have been possible. Thank you for your support, guidance, and patience through the past seven years. To my committee members—Ann Meier, Rob Warren, and Ryan Allen—who have tirelessly offered their wisdom and support, I am grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from you. I have also benefited from the mentorship of amazing scholars in the Department of Sociology and beyond. I would like to thank Phyllis Moen, Carolyn Liebler, Teresa Swartz, Michelle Phelps, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Lara Cleveland, Sula Sakar, Greta Friedemann-Sánchez, and Fran Vavrus for the timely and brilliant advices along the way. I would also like to thank the staff in the Department of Sociology: Mary Drew, Kerri Deef, Ann Miller, Becky Drasin, Hilda Mork, Holly Schoonover. Thanks for your dedicated work to ensure that my graduate career run smoothly and to champion a supportive and friendly space on the 9th floor. To my grad-friends, I am blessed to share this journey with you: Shi-Rong Lee, Joe Svec, Tanja Andic, Nicholas J. Wahutu, Andy Wu, Kevin Huang, Erin Hoekstra, Carolyn Fraker, Sarah Garcia, Maryia Bakhtsiyarava, Stephen Wulf, Alex Manning, Yagmur Karakaya, Suzy Maves McElrath, Chris Levesque, Isabel Arriagada, Sangyoo Lee—thanks for keeping me sane! To those who have walked the path earlier—Wenjie Liao, Erika Busse, and Meghan Krausch—thank you for your patience with my endless questions, and for being great friends. My Ki-Aikido teachers and friends have helped me grow personally, concurrent with my journey through grad school. I extend my respects and gratitude to my teachers, Koichi Tohei Sensei, Shinichi Tohei Sensei, David Shaner Sensei, Jonathan Poppele Sensei, and Quang-Anh Nguyen Sensei. To my extended family of Ki-Akido practitioners, both in the United States and Vietnam, your dedication inspires me daily. i I am blessed to have the unconditional love and support from my family. This dissertation is dedicated to them. To my parents and parents-in-law, who have been tremendously kind and supportive through these long seven years. To Kami, my little sister, who always helps me see the bright side with her contagious optimism. Lastly, and most importantly, to my twin soul and caring husband—Jason Nguyen, I could never thank you enough, for everything. ii Abstract Prior research has noted several instances when immigration laws and policies might impact the migration patterns of international students; however, the effort to link international student research with the broader study of migration remains limited. One key limitation is the lack of data on international students that encompass multiple destinations or multiple time frames. As King and Raghuram (2013: 132) noted a recent review, “a more sophisticated quantitative analysis […] is also necessary if any kinds of causal relations are to be established.” Accordingly, I curated the best available data on international students in the United States, through a Freedom of Information Act request and two restricted data licenses, which would enable large-scale analyses of international student migration patterns. My overarching hypothesis is that international students are vulnerable to the negative impacts of U.S. anti-immigration policies, both at the federal and the state level, because of their unique status as “side-door immigrants,” an in-between status between “desirable” and “undesirable” immigrants. I examine empirical evidences of international students’ vulnerability with three analyses. First, I consider whether and how U.S. states’ anti-immigration policy may have spillover effects on the enrollment patterns of international students. Second, taking a historical view of changes in U.S. immigration policies since 1986, I consider how policy changes towards a crimmigration regime impact international students’ ways of staying, i.e., their transitions into subsequent migration statuses. Third, contributing to the understanding of localities as unique immigration destinations within the United States, I provide a baseline estimate—the first of its kind—of lifetime retention of international students in their first study location, relative to other U.S.-educated immigrants. My results suggest that international students are indeed vulnerable to anti-immigration policies. By destabilizing the discrete categorization of immigrants, the “side door” framework facilitates future efforts to theorize and analyze unintended, or spillover, policy effects. This is essential for understanding the experiences of all temporary immigrants at the side door relative to policy change. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... i Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ........................................................................................................................ v List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Will they come anyway? Effects of U.S. state immigration policies on international student enrollment, 2001-2015. .................................................. 9 Chapter 3. Ways of Staying: Immigrant Status of International Student-Stayers and Its Variations over Cohorts and Education Trajectories .................................... 52 Chapter 4. Retaining Foreign-Born Students in Local Economies Post-Graduation ....... 99 Chapter 5. Conclusions .................................................................................................. 140 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 146 Appendix ......................................................................................................................... 162 iv List of Tables Table 2.1. Descriptive statistics of variables used in analysis ......................................... 47 Table 2.2. Analyses of international student enrollments, 2001-2015 ............................ 48 Table 2.3. Alternative specifications for Model 1 ........................................................... 49 Table 2.4. Analyses for subsets of international student enrollments .............................. 51 Table 3.1. Descriptive statistics of variables used in analysis ......................................... 91 Table 3.2. Logistic regressions predicting LPR status (relative to temporary visas) ...... 93 Table 3.3. Logistic regressions predicting naturalization (relative to LPR status) .......... 96 Table 4.1. Type of immigrant destinations .................................................................... 132 Table 4.2. Descriptive statistics of variables used in analysis ....................................... 133 Table 4.3. Logistic regression predicting the odds of moving out from first study location (U.S. state) .................................................................................................... 135 Table 4.4. Multinomial logistic models predicting the odds of moving into traditional and non-traditional states. ............................................................................. 137 Appendix A. Sensitivity analysis for Model 1 and Model 2 in Table 2.2. .................... 163 v List of Figures Figure 2.1. The side door of immigration ........................................................................ 44 Figure 2.2. Heterogeneity among international students ................................................. 45 Figure 2.3. Changes in international student enrollments, 2001-2015 ............................ 45 Figure 3.1. Presence of student-stayers in the United States foreign-born SHE workforce, 2003-2013 ...................................................................................................... 88 Figure 3.2. Predictive margins showing interaction effect of entry cohort and years since entry on LPR status ....................................................................................... 89 Figure 3.3. Types of student-stayers by entry cohorts ..................................................... 90 Figure 4.1. Location change between first U.S. study destination and current location among U.S.-educated foreign-born SHE population ................................... 131 vi Chapter 1. Introduction In October 2015, The New York Times ran a story on the growing number of international students “finding American dreams” in Flint, Michigan (Young 2015). On one hand, this is surprising because, in many ways, Flint is the opposite of what comes to mind when one thinks of major destinations